Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Scott Edelman is one of the more interesting and lighthearted characters in science fiction. A former assistant editor at Marvel Comics who later served as editor of Science Fiction Age magazine, Edelman is currently involved in the SciFi Channel’s newly christened Sci Fi Wire entertainment site. In a fascinating September 1997 interview with SF&F writer Jayme Lynn Blaschke that was published in Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy Speak (2005), Edelman recalled how he always received stories about Mars:

Jayme Lynn Blaschke: You mentioned earlier that you, as an editor, are at the mercy of what writers submit. Have you noticed any current trends among the submissions that you receive?

Scott Edelman: It’s funny. The trends that I end up noticing are more political than anything else. I always get Mars stories. The stack of stories on my desk always has Mars in it. There was a period when I was getting O. J. Simpson stories. People wanted to do science fiction stories about O. J. in the future. Things like that happen. I don’t think any of those trends, when they occur, hurt an author in any way. If I buy a great Mars story, I’m not going to turn down another set on Mars just because I’ve already got one in inventory. I don’t think writers necessarily have to steer clear of those trends. It’s what the writer does with the building blocks that matters.

Speaking of building blocks, Scott Edelman constructed one of my favorite short stories: “Mom, the Martians, and Me” (2002), which was published in the anthology Mars Probes (2002).

"I'm an optimist. I discard all such dark tomorrows. I have faith in man as God and God as man; I believe we'll be immortal, seed the stars and live forever in the flesh of our children. That's my job as a writer -- to show man his basic goodness, to dramatize his struggle up and away from this planet." -- RB